Extract

Having visited several portions of the coast-line of East Berwickshire in company with Dr. Macvie of Chirnside, and Mr. Elder of Jardinefield—who are intelligently acquainted with the district—I thought it might interest members to whom the locality is new were I to give a short account of some of the interesting things I had seen during our excursion.

The geological associations connected with the coast-line of Berwickshire, which had their origin in the earlier days of the science, and resulted in furnishing the means for solving some of its hitherto unexplained problems, give to a section of this sea-shore a high and enduring interest. It was among the highly contorted Silurian strata which form the bold headlands lying to the east of Cockburnspath that Hutton gathered part of the proofs and illustrations of his famous work, “The Theory of the Earth, 1795,” wherein he shows that the various changes undergone by the earth's crust in the past were similar to those happening in recent times; that the grits and shales, at first laid down horizontally on the sea-bottom, had been convoluted and placed on end; and that their exposed edges had been worn down by the action of waves, which had placed upon them a series of gently inclined sandstones and conglomerates. Here, also, Sir James Hall of Dunglas, well known for his geological papers in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, made those observations on the effects of lateral pressure in crumpling and contorting large masses of

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